The Details

When artist Eri King decided to create works using consumer refuse to address the abundance of waste, she could have just made a little landfill in the gallery. The heap of discarded materials—videotapes, electronics and fabrics—would likely have anyone rethinking their obedience to corporate marketing and advertising suckership.

Instead, King has us considering our relationship with consumerism by building neat and orderly sculptures replicating palatial and cathedral items—a throne made of stacked videotapes, a tower from the tapes’ jackets, columns from braided fabrics and a tower of stereos and televisions.

That these symbolically lofty sculptures, which comprise the show Buy Kingdom at Winchester Cultural Center, were built using leftovers from Middle America’s quest for the newest (and often least necessary) can trigger thoughts of third-world perceptions of America.

But the Las Vegas artist is actually reminding us of what we ourselves hold sacred—the consumption of disposable and innovative products that define us. Even a stained glass-inspired quilt, (reverence made from human labor), is made of discarded fabric. “There’s a planned obsolescence in everything we buy,” King says. “Even though some products today are made to last, the market won’t allow it.”